


Infinite

by legitimate_salvage (ifinkufreaky)



Category: The Expanse Series - James S. A. Corey
Genre: Child Loss, Gen, tw: loss of a child
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-04
Updated: 2016-10-04
Packaged: 2018-08-19 11:33:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8204743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ifinkufreaky/pseuds/legitimate_salvage
Summary: From the fictober2016 prompt "infinite." How Naomi got from Filip to here.





	

The grief was infinite. Naomi could keep it in a little box in her heart, segregated from her daily experience, but she knew it would always be there, would go on forever. Probably even if she got Filip back one day. She had lost his childhood, and nothing could get that back for her.

She had tried to forget. Tried going back to who she was before: one of those girls who found babies cute at a distance but irritating in close quarters. She wasn’t sure she would have ever had a child if it weren’t for Marco and his pretty words about creating something with their love, a copy of themselves and a strong new generation for the Belt. If she could forget Marco, surely she could forget that dream that he had built for her, too.

It didn’t help. She was changed, a new creature. She knew things now: the feeling of tiny fingers clutching at her flesh, a warm little body that never seemed able to relax unless it was nestled against her chest. The painful peace of an infant suckling at your breast. The maddening cocktail of emotions that came when your world narrowed down to nothing but this being, a being that depended utterly and entirely on you. She couldn’t go back to being the woman who felt only annoyed at a baby’s cry, who didn’t feel the bottom fall out of her gut with longing and a primal need to hold on and to soothe when she heard it. 

_ It was only eight months, _ she tried telling herself.  _ Eight months is nothing in the span of a life. _ But eight months with Filip was like sixteen, was like a lifetime; Filip who couldn’t sleep more than three hours at a stretch, Filip who made time stop when he gazed into her eyes. He had used an infant’s tactics of psychological warfare to break her down and remake her, far more successfully than anything Marco had ever tried. Made her into something entirely wrung out, but with a core of iron and always a little bit more to give. Something whose arms were eternally gentle even when a sobbing frustrated rage was lurking just behind. Someone who could soothe while holding back her own tears. “Bonding” was too innocuous of a word to describe what had happened to her in those endless days and nights. Filip’s innocent torture - sleep interruptions, endless crying and rare smiles - had reforged her into a mother;  _ his _ mother.

The grief was infinite, so she doled it out to herself in tiny portions. Five seconds remembering his tiny chest rising and falling under her hand in the middle of the night. A one-minute daydream about teaching him to customize mods on his first hand terminal. Thirty seconds trying to recapture the smell of his scalp. A few moments of wondering how old he would have been when he abandoned “Mama,” and would only call her “Ma.”

The grief was infinite and the self-hate was never far behind. Who would Filip grow up to be, with only Marco to shape his mind and values? What kind of person abandons her baby, what kind of  _ woman _ does that. She wasn’t being beaten, she wasn’t being raped. Marco was tearing her down psychologically, but your own feelings don’t matter when children are small. She should have stayed and suffocated. A mother who was dead inside was still better than a mother who was so far away she might as well be dead.

She knew bringing Filip into the world had almost killed her. Sometimes she wished it had; guts ripping, muscles tearing themselves from her abdominal wall, her life’s blood hemorrhaging out to the floor. The image was almost a perfect match for how the guilt felt; tearing her apart endlessly after she left.

She worked on dreary ships like the  _ Canterbury _ for years, hiding herself, hiding from herself. Making a life with only just about as much happiness as she deserved. The first person she allowed herself even a hint of intimacy with was Amos. It was a safe intimacy: silent, pale, and limited. She envied his apparent inability to feel emotion. She learned from him, numbed herself to the depths of human experience in his presence. The grief was infinite, but it was receding. There were days when she forgot to define herself by it. It was in another chapter of her life, and the tedious, colorless chapter she was living now on the  _ Cant _ was good enough for her. Because self-respect mattered more; was worth the grief. She was free, and she knew her work wasn’t hurting anyone. If you never spoke of something, if no one around you knew your secret, it could be like it never happened, right?

It wasn’t, but it was enough. Enough to let her sleep, enough to let her wake up each morning and do her work. Enough to keep a grief as infinite as the void surrounding the ship at bay, her mental airlocks sealed. Nothing needed to exist for her beyond the hulls of the  _ Canterbury. _


End file.
